[Given Block M-gate, a repost. And P.S., Lay off Hunter Lochmann! The guy is great and readers of this site, I hope, understand the point he was trying to make. And yes, feel free to bang on me for addressing this issue in this blurb– but I’m busy, darn it!]

At glance, the design on this pendant that I bought on eBay back in 2013 doesn’t seem too out of ordinary. On its face you’ve got a thick maize Block M, flanked by blue enamel sitting above the U-M seal:But upon closer inspection the date on the deal is 1837, not 1817, and therefore the pendant pre-dates 1929. The surprise here, to me, is that is a fairly modern looking maize block ‘M’ style for such a vintage piece. Back then, while there were certainly a great deal of variation, the block Ms in circulation were much thinner than today’s style:

Now to be fair, you probably can tell that’s not the modern block M—the cleft in the middle drops to the bottom unlike the official design which cuts off half way, but…it’s pretty close. You’d also be hard pressed to find Michigan merch today set on stainless steel outside of the occasional collectible spoon.

Either way whomever created this beauty had a vision for a wider and badder block M and went with it. The only sensible conclusion is that this was created by the Michigan time travelling hipster: